


A Swing and a Kiss

by wearitcounts (Sher_locked_up)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Baseball, Boston, Drinking, Fenway Park, First Kiss, John in shorts, Kissing, M/M, Mycroft is a scheming force of good, Neil Diamond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 03:26:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2254071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sher_locked_up/pseuds/wearitcounts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no kiss cam at Fenway Park.</p><p>Until John and Sherlock arrive, that is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Swing and a Kiss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scullyseviltwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the BEAUTIFUL, TALENTED, WONDERFUL, _ONE-OF-MY-FAVORITE-HUMANS-ON-THE-PLANET_ , [LESLIE](http://scullyseviltwin.tumblr.com)!!!!!
> 
> Please check out Camille's [amazing art](http://wearitcounts.tumblr.com/post/96621038542/a-swing-and-a-kiss-relationship-sherlock) for this fic!
> 
>  **Disclaimer** : I am sure there are tons of Brits who perfectly understand and enjoy baseball and hot dogs with mustard and relish, and who know and enjoy Neil Diamond. It's just more fun for me to make Sherlock and John really clueless about it. 
> 
>    
>  ~~Also this is really really dumb I'm so sorry.~~

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” John said, beaming out at the sunny field and taking a sip of his lager. “Never thought I’d get the chance.”

Sherlock sighed. John had on that insufferable grin he used whenever he was exceptionally pleased to be doing something exceptionally ordinary, and wanted Sherlock to know it. Sherlock hated that grin.

Which is to say, he often daydreamed about wiping that grin clear off John’s mouth.

With his own mouth.

Sherlock pushed the thought away and resumed pouting. “Honestly, John. You don’t even know how the game’s _played_.”

“Sure I do,” John protested, taking an overlarge bite out of the hot dog for which he’d insisted upon paying _five American dollars_ , and then proceeded, to Sherlock’s horror, to smother in yellow mustard and pickle relish. He waved the offending item toward the infield. “There are balls. And bases. And bits of dirt round them.”

“A thrilling and exhaustive summary.”

“Git,” John replied, without heat. He gestured toward Sherlock’s beer with his own, which he held in his right hand, as his left was currently tasked with stuffing his face full of frankfurter. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll drink that. It cost almost ten dollars.”

“Who cares,” Sherlock scoffed, but he took a sip anyway. “It’s Mycroft’s money.”

“Yes, how _did_ you convince your brother to fund our trip overseas?”

“Oh, told him I’d take care of a little legwork,” Sherlock sniffed. “Didn’t realise that along with assisting me with a case of our own, _you’d_ insist upon—how did you so charmingly put it?— _seeing the sights_?”

John shrugged and polished off his hot dog, washing it down with a few gulps of beer that had to be rapidly warming in his hand, exposed to the summer evening sunshine. “This is Fenway Park. It’s an American institution. Baseball is America’s pastime. I wasn’t going to come all the way to Boston and not see _this_.”

Sherlock groaned and slithered out of his jacket. “It’s so _hot_. Why is it so bloody _hot_ in America?”

“It’s August, and you’ve worn a thousand-quid suit to a baseball park. Figure it out, genius.”

Sherlock glared, but that only served to remind him of John’s rather more exposed than usual frame, attired much less formally in a newly-purchased Boston Red Sox tee shirt and khaki shorts that hit just above the knee.

John _did_ have rather nice calves.

The crowd around them suddenly hushed, and then everyone, seemingly simultaneously, rose to their feet, all eyes on the left field wall that loomed large and green over the outfielders dotting the grass below. Moments later, an absolute cacophony of pure jubilation erupted as the crowd whooped, cheered, high-fived, spilled beer all over one another, and generally lost their minds.

When the din finally settled, Sherlock leaned toward John. “What happened there, then?”

John pointed. “That wall there, that’s the Green Monster,” he explained, “notoriously difficult obstacle, from what I read online; and that player there,” he pointed again, “just hit the ball over it. That’s a home run, and from the sound of it, a really, really good one.”

Sherlock picked up his beer and took three pointed, resolute gulps. “Perhaps I _should_ drink this.”

John patted his knee. “Come on, buck up. There’s more where that came from, and at the eighth inning, there’s meant to be music!”

“Music?”

“Yes!” John’s face scrunched up in a manner so endearing it took all of Sherlock’s resolve not to lean over and kiss his nose. “Ever heard of a bloke called Neil Diamond?”

 

***

 

At the seventh inning stretch, Sherlock had matched John at four pints apiece, with another each under their seats for safekeeping, and he was feeling rather better about the whole baseball business, especially after he’d shed his dress shirt and allowed John (with Mycroft’s generous funding) to purchase him a novelty tee.

“Napoli?” He’d asked dubiously.

“Just wear it,” John had advised.

And that was how, as the top of the eighth was coming to a close, Sherlock found himself pleasantly drunk, in the pleasantly cool night air, in the pleasant company of the only human being on the planet for whom he’d endure _organised sport_ ,  thinking for the first time in more years than he could recall that maybe it was just possible to be totally, giddily, unreservedly happy.

That was his first clue that he ought not have allowed his guard to drop.

The music began, yes, but along with the music, something funny was happening on the giant screen hanging over the field. Couples in the audience kept getting picked out and focussed upon, and when they noticed the camera, everyone around them started chanting “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

“That’s wicked weird,” Sherlock heard a woman behind him remark in a thick South Boston accent, “there’s no kiss cam at Fenway!”

“Fuckin’ right, there’s no kiss cam at Fenway,” her companion jeered, “the fuck is _this_ horse shit?”

In front of him, the crowd seemed to be taking it better, cooing and shrieking over the first few couples selected by the camera who, by and large, obliged with differing levels of modesty.

Next to him, he heard John murmur, “Well, that’s odd, I could’ve sworn I read something online about how they don’t generally do this sort of thing here…” he shrugged. “Ah, well.”

The cogs in Sherlock’s beer-soaked brain turned sluggishly, and with a heavy sort of effort, he realised— _Mycroft_.

“John!” Sherlock spoke urgently, but John was too busy swigging his beer and joining in, singing what were likely the wrong words to the jangling music along with the drunken locals around him.

Sherlock turned his body fully toward John and grabbed him by the shoulders in a blind panic, aware his voice was higher than it had any right to be as he yelled over the crowd, “John! John, wait, I have to tell you—”

They were cut off by the crowd around them, the majority of whom had gone absolutely _mental_ over whatever was onscreen.

Sherlock risked a glance.

It was all happening too quickly: his abject humiliation;  the drunken cheering; the enlarged, pixellated images of him holding John by the shoulders in what was all too easy to interpret as a passionate embrace up there for all to see on the screen; that frankly _enormous_ and entirely unnecessary pink heart around them; and, worst of all, John’s slow, easy smile as he shrugged and said, seemingly in slow motion, “Well, when in Rome—”

Then John’s mouth was on his, and for all he was on the really very far side of tipsy, Sherlock wasn’t stupid; John’s lips were pursed and dry, placed deliberately against Sherlock’s in a firm, placating sort of gesture, and if Sherlock wanted to, he could leave it at that, some silly game they played that one time Mycroft bribed all of Fenway Park to get John Watson to kiss Sherlock Holmes.

Only, Sherlock didn’t.

He grabbed John’s face with his hands, dug his fingers into John’s jaw, coaxed his face forward until he could pry John’s lips open with his tongue and lick into his mouth before sucking on his lower lip sweetly, as if it were sugar-spun.

The image of them onscreen had long since faded, the song played out, and the bottom of the eighth inning was getting underway, but Sherlock felt trapped inside the heavy space they’d created within that kiss, hot and wretchedly unsure, his hands still gently cupping John’s cheeks, mouth just a little too close to John’s face.

“ _Get a room!_ ” Someone from the crowd yelled pointedly, and with that, everything broke.

John pulled away, giggled nervously, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and said, “Well, then. Rome indeed.”

“John—”

“Yeah, I know” John said, shaking himself a bit, shrugging off something Sherlock couldn’t see and retrieving a beer from beneath his seat. “Mycroft. I figured it out, too. I’m not stupid, you know.”

Sherlock managed a weak grin. “Where _do_ you get that idea?”

John smiled back, but it was a tenuous thing, and it set Sherlock’s nerves on edge. He sucked in all the breath he could out of the air between them, but before he could speak, John turned and leaned right into his space.

“The suggestion for _me_ to kiss _you_ was Mycroft’s,” John said quietly, dangerously, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear above the boom of the crowd after another run batted in, “but the way _you_ kissed _me_ was all yours.”

Sherlock swallowed.

John swigged the last of his beer and stood. “I dunno about you, but I honestly haven’t the slightest preference about who wins. I’m headed back to the hotel.” He held out a hand to Sherlock, and something wicked gleamed in his eye as he asked, “Care to join me?”

Sherlock took his hand and stood, heart beating a wild tattoo against his chest.

“Oh, god. _Yes_.”


End file.
